


Focus Up

by HolyMakkirel



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Ardbert and Earin hooked up previously but this fic isn't too romantic, Bugs & Insects, But hey she rests a week and she's fine, Established Relationship, F/M, Flash Forward, Implied Relationships, In Media Res, Sorta Serious Injuries, Sparring, Teasing, Training, so if bugs skeeve you out maybe skip past the intro, that big ass moth b-rank hunt shows up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:53:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27060766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HolyMakkirel/pseuds/HolyMakkirel
Summary: After an injury leaves Earienwel bedridden and Ardbert panicked, he talks her into some more physical training to help herself in close quarters. As it turns out, his goals are a bit higher than she expected. As it turns out, she doesn't mind.Set after ZammyShad's "Against the Dying Light."
Relationships: Ardbert & Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Ardbert/Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV)
Kudos: 11





	Focus Up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [freyr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/freyr/gifts).



Arrows. Fireballs. The body at her back. All variables that Earin balanced in her dance throughout the battlefield they’d made of this clearing. Renda-Rae and Nyelbert faced her down from the front, maintaining their barrage. Ardbert practically pressed against her from behind, Branden past him like a battering ram against a wall, the two men grinning tauntingly at one another as their weapons clashed. With every step Branden pressed forward against Ardbert, Ardbert stepped backwards against her, and she stepped forward away from him. In combat, bumping into him would be catastrophic – if he was backing away from something, it was for a reason, and if he  _ couldn’t _ back away when he needed to, that reason would certainly become an issue. Every impulse in her body insisted that she drop this axe, grab her codex, grant him a bulwark against the sword bearing down against him – but she fought the impulses and focused on the archer and mage across from her. Lamitt was healing the two axe wielders throughout, and Earin had to count on that as she dealt with other concerns. Protecting Ardbert was protecting herself, and she raised her arm up, bracing against an arrow with her armguard before bringing up her axe to intercept a fireball. She couldn’t see it, with how much she was focusing on what was ahead of her, but both men behind her occasionally snuck a peek, unable to suppress their interest. As luck would have it, they were both watching her little maneuver, and the immersion shattered as Branden let out an awed gasp and Ardbert a  **_“Nice!”_ ** before catching himself in a laugh.

In an instant, everything stopped. Every weapon hung low as snickers filled the party, all looking back at their two burliest companions and letting the tension fall as characters broke. Earin remembered she was safe.

\------------------------------------

Weeks earlier, she was in a similar spot, feeling just as safe. Arrows. Fireballs. Two capable fighters a good distance ahead of her, holding back great reptilian beasts with all the effort it might take for one to push a chair. The dracos of Lakeland were a new mutation on a longtime mainstay of the fields that surrounded the small fishing hamlets, far more hostile than their ancestors. Having become a threat to the locals, a hunt was called, and the adventurers passing through were more than willing to accept the mission. To them, a few winged lizards were no threat. Low effort led to idle thoughts, and idle thoughts had Earin’s mind wandering. These things reminded her of the Dravanians, though their builds were quite different. The  _ wing patterns,  _ though… more like a butterfly than any Dravanian she’d ever encountered, and ten times as beautiful. She could stare at them all day, despite that distracting buzzing in her ears, and with how easy these things were to handle, she’d happily return if the population was ever an issue again. This habitat wasn’t great, though – annoyingly windy and covered in a horrible shadow that seemed to be moving and growing as if… alive?

Suddenly, she was flying. Knocked from her feet, soaring through the air, turned about-face as she caught a glimpse of her assailant; a great butterfly, pink and blue and getting torn into by those same fireballs and arrows that she’d been surrounded by earlier, bashed in the head by a Roegadyn ( _ Galdjent, _ really, but semantics weren’t her priority at the moment) shoulder, and dispatched just a moment too late. It’d snuck up on her, fast enough that the covering fire squad didn’t notice. She saw Lamitt raise her staff in an attempt to rescue her, she saw Ardbert, axe tossed to the wayside as he sprinted down the hill, hoping to catch her.

And then she woke up. She woke up sore as sore could be and uncomfortably close to the worried face of Lamitt poring over her for signs of recovery, but she woke up nonetheless. The Dwarf jumped back in shock at the sight of Earin’s eyes opening, immediately running into the hall screaming for Ardbert. Moments later, the sound of boots hurrying through the halls grew louder as he downright ran into the room, just about throwing his arms around her in relief as Lamitt awkwardly shut the door behind them. 

Then opened the door to yell a “don’t squeeze so hard!” and then shut it once more.

Slowly, it dawned on Earin what’d happened, memories of how it felt to be battered by the hillside as she tumbled away from her party rushing back in. Slower, she lifted her arms, wrapping them around him from behind as she prepared herself for a tough answer.

“How… how long was I out?”

“Bit under a day.” His voice was weak and tired, as though he was still adjusting to the realization that tremendous pressure had been lifted from his shoulders.

Earin sighed.  _ A day. _ The split second between her question and his answer had flooded her mind with possibilities: three days, a week, a month. A day? Awful, certainly, but by Halone, did it relieve her.

He laughed softly. “I’m glad at least one of us is happy with that answer.” Pulling away, he sat at her bedside, not waiting for her to speak. “Earienwel, what happened yesterday - it can’t happen again. I-”

“Hold, hold, hold  _ on  _ a moment.” Having only just awoken, she was in no place to have him start his worried motormouthing before she caught her breath. “What exactly happened, anyway?”

“There was some damn moth or something, a big bugger. Flew right into you. Loud bloody thing, too, which is what has me so worried. How’d it slip by you?”

Earin thought back to the moment. She didn’t want to say it. “I… got distracted. No excuses. My eyes were dead-set ahead and I didn’t notice until it was too late.”

Ardbert paused contemplatively. “...what if we helped you prepare for situations like that? I mean, there’s no question that you’re as capable on the battlefield as any of us, but even Lamitt and Nyelbert are prepared to push themselves free if something jumps them.”

Pondering the offer, Earin took a moment to consider it. It wasn’t as though she was averse to physical exertion, having done no shortage of acrobatics in her day, Red Magic focii fairly familiar in her hands. But a quick flip certainly wouldn’t save her from a tackle like the one she took, if it slipped her notice the way that moth’s did. Oblivious to what she was inviting onto herself, she asked a simple question. “What do you have in mind?”

Ardbert’s face lit up with an almost shite-eating grin.

\------------------------------------

Earin did  _ not _ expect this.

Fitness training. Close quarters combat. Maybe some light sparring.

Ardbert had handed her an axe and disappeared only to come by with a chest-tall boulder to set before her. “Well? Go on.”

A glare flew from her eyes straight to his. Slowly and with no lack of trouble, she lifted the axe and bonked it softly against the top of the rock, leaving it there as she crossed her arms. “And how, pray tell, is this supposed to help my reflexes?”

“Reflexes?” He planted his axe in the ground and leaned over it towards her, that shite-eating grin seemingly having survived her recovery week. “I never said anything about reflexes. Next time something like that rushes you, you oughta be able to plant your feet and keep yourself safe.”

Her jaw dropped as it dawned on her what he expected. “You said Nyelbert and Lamitt could do what you’d make me do! I  _ know _ that neither of them is splitting boulders.”

“Tsk, don’t you know it’s rude to make assumptions?” She was right, of course; Lamitt was on the weaker side for a Dwarf and Nyelbert definitely wasn’t swinging anything with rock-shattering force. But Ardbert wanted to be triple-sure Earin was safe, and he knew she could handle it.

“I’m not saying you’ve gotta cleave this thing in two right now.” He walked over to the rock, picking up her axe and handing it back to her. “I just want you to swing into it as hard as you can. Get a baseline going, you know?”

“You say that like you expect me to split it someday.”

“Maybe I do, maybe I don’t, maybe you will, maybe you won’t. Just hit the rock?”

She rolled her eyes and gave him a moment to swing out of the way. She’d chopped firewood before; how different could this be? With a heavy lift and a grunt, she brought the blade of the axe down with all the weight it could muster, hitting the top of the boulder with a loud crash. It was a long way off shattering, but the weapon was lodged in there, sticking into a snug crevasse she just barely managed to carve into it. Confidently, she turned to Ardbert with a look that screamed  _ ‘bet you didn’t expect that, huh?’ _

She was the one with expectations defied as she found Ardbert looking uncharacteristically analytical, rubbing his chin as he walked around the boulder, seemingly studying both it and the damage she’d dealt. “What?” She asked flatly, not wanting to hear him say he expected better than that for a first swing.

“Nothing, nothing, just some easy fixes.” Walking up beside her, he gripped his own axe and angled himself as though about to hit an imaginary rock beside hers. “You came in at an angle. Good for slicing, worse for cleaving.” Leading up with his lower hand and orienting with his upper hand, he held a pose with his axe behind his head, the blade nigh-perfectly aligned with his spine. “With something like this, you put more force into the downswing.” To demonstrate, he swung forward at nothing, and drove the axe so deep into the earth that the pommel hung upwards into the air. “Now you.”

Earin didn’t get why they were doing this. It was a far cry from anything she felt was practical, and she questioned when her combat operations would require her to drive an axe through the top of something, or what underlying lessons this may be teaching her. Still… she agreed to do this, so she might as well humor him. Grabbing the axe once more, she lifted it behind her head like he did, only to feel palms against her wrists. When did he get behind her? 

“See, your angle is off, still.” He pushed her arms in opposite directions, aligning them fist-over-fist. She got the sense that he didn’t need to be standing in so close with her, but also that he wasn’t doing it quite on purpose, more like he simply didn’t feel the need to keep his distance. How did she feel about that? She wasn’t sure. But it did make her a little happy. “Try now.”

Oh, right, there was a rock in front of her. He’d lined her hands up for her, so all she had to do was the easy part. Lift, swing…  **crack.** She watched with great surprise as a lightning bolt of fractures webbed out from where her axe had nestled itself, chips falling out and dust flying up, the rock still far from shattered, but much more deeply cleft than she’d expected even with the fact that she was hitting an existing crack. Ardbert returned from his retreated position with a pat on her back, letting out a laugh as he admired her handiwork. “See? All in the technique, Earin. Well, that and your arms not lacking in the first place.”

Shock wearing off, she turned slowly towards him with a growing smile. “Alright, alright, I see how it is… Fine, then, Ardbert. I’ll train right up until I can split one of these in two, I suppose.”

“Bah, that won’t take you two weeks. Practice keeps the habit strong, right? We’ll keep at it when we’ve got a spare moment. Trust me - Give it a month, and you’ll be better with one of these than I am.”

\------------------------------------

A month had come and gone, and unsurprisingly, his hyperbole remained just that. Still, there was no denying her progress, the Elezen looking quite comfortable in her warrior’s armor, an axe in her hands. It’s not as though she went into battle in it, but she had a good few spars under her belt by now, and it felt almost jarring how quickly she’d grown into the role.

Perhaps she just liked fighting alongside him -  _ actually _ alongside him. Even now, as the tension snapped and they all broke character, laughing along like the friends they were, doing it right by him more in-sync than ever was a joy.

Her body moved, halfway without her knowing, jumping in front of Ardbert with her armguard up to protect her face. She heard a metallic  _ plink _ , and watched an arrow fall to her feet, a shite-eating grin painting her face as she looked first to an approving Rebda-Rae in the distance and then to a shocked-but-equally-approving Ardbert.

“How’d that slip by you?” Her voice  _ dripped _ smugness. It took all that both of them had to not burst into laughter at her teasing right in front of the preparing-to-attack-again Branden. 

“What can I say?” He stanced up, and she took her position at his back once more. “Got distracted. No excuses. My eyes were...” furrowing his brow, he shook his head with a shrug. “I can’t quote one thing you said a month and a bloody half ago.” From the moment they’d lowered their weapons to right now, his eyes barely left her for a moment.

“Focus up,” she says, before reconciling what he just let slip with her memory of that conversation. “Wait, were you staring at me?”

He turned his head, finally, grin not fading as he stared down the charging Galdjent. “Focus up.”

**Author's Note:**

> if you want to be updated on my fics as they come, or are interested in giving me ideas to write, you can follow me on twitter @nogoodtora!


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